


Tama said

by athos



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Archery, Gen, Or not, a relationship between Sera and Adaar can be inferred, detailed and specific description of how to shoot a bow, drabbl-ish, feel good, mages can shoot stuff, memories amidst present action, spoiler alert: don't use your shoulders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 10:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7754533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athos/pseuds/athos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was a mage--a good mage. </p><p>But archery was a reminder that she was more than just a mage, that she had skills beyond what mana offered her, that her discipline and will could be put to many purposes, including one that no demon could ever tempt her from. </p><p>She wondered if Tama had known, if that had been her design.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tama said

 

 

Holding a bow is her earliest memory.

 

She knows that Tama took her from the Qun when she was young, when signs first hinted she would be a mage. She knows that they were in two mercenary companies before they found Shokrakar and joined her group. She knows as much of her childhood history as Tama shared, and does not need to know more, never regretted asking more questions before Tama died. 

 

She knows the stories Tama told her, but the feeling of a bow in her hand is her earliest physical memory, older and more solid than her fist encased in ice or the green wisps that knit together torn skin and splintered bones. Her first merc company cut her first bow, but she quickly grew too tall to use it. Every growth spurt meant a new bow and frustrating few weeks re-learning the weapon and her own body, but holding a bow always felt right and familiar.

 

She was a mage; that inescapable fact had guided her life. She was a good mage. But archery was a reminder that she was more than just a mage, that she had skills beyond what mana offered her, that her discipline and will could be put to many purposes, including one that no demon could ever tempt her from. She wondered if Tama had known, if that had been her design.

 

She stands in the courtyard at night, feet automatically shoulder-width apart. Her weight is forward on the balls of her feet, calves and quads engaged. The bow in her left hand has an ironwood riser and composite yew and horn limbs.  _ It had been waiting for her when she, Dorian, Solas and Cassandra returned from Redcliffe. Shokrakar sent it with her exuberant thanks for the ‘fiery demon’ job, and Adaar had almost wept with happiness at the unexpected reminder of her friends, her home. Now she didn’t just have a bow that was sized for her, but she had  _ her  _ bow. The unsolicited gift soothed her hurt on Dorian’s behalf, her confusion that parents could be so blind and cruel. _

 

She takes one of the arrows thrust into the ground at her feet between her second and third finger, threads it between the bow and string, steadies the shaft along the arrow rest, and nocks it. A whisper of space separates her fingers from the nocked arrow, her pointer finger above, third and fourth below. The first two fingers hold the twisted string in the crease of the first knuckle, and the string rests on the calloused pad of her fourth finger. _ Tama said a mage should always have a back-up weapon, for when they were out of mana, for when they were posing as non-mages. Many times the Valo-Kas had gotten the better of an enemy by surprising them with magic, including times they’d protected themselves from untrustworthy clients who thought they’d get the better of the Tal-Vashoth. Someone who depended exclusively on one thing for defense was easily defeated, Tama said. _

 

Tilting her pelvis slightly up and engaging her core in a solid standing crunch, Adaar raises the bow so that her bow arm is parallel to the grass she stands on. With only enough pressure on the string to keep the bow in place, she feels her bones from her ribs to her shoulder, through her arm and the ball of her hand, pointing through the riser and toward her target. _ Archery was the ideal martial discipline for a mage, Tama said, because it demanded body awareness and control as well as discipline. Because it was meditative and relaxing. Because Tama could teach her. _

 

She takes a deep breath, expanding her chest as though her torso could impose itself between the bow and the string, using her back muscles instead of her shoulders and arms, only activating them enough to guide her movements.  _ The practice hadn’t been relaxing when Tama had made her train with magebane in her blood, nauseated and resentful yet determined, and she was grateful for the awful experiences when the Valo-Kas fought against other mages who excelled at disrupting her own magic.  _

 

She draws the string back to her anchor (at least this one doesn’t burn and glow, she thought mirthlessly), presses her right forefinger hard against her cheekbone, her thumb lose and tucked back against the corner of her jaw, curled to meet her pinky. Her fingertips brush her lips, and she feels when her hand fits perfectly against her face.  _ She remembered the Templar--former Templar?-- who Smote and Silenced her during an ambush. She hadn’t known at the time that the fight was staged, that Tama and Shokrakar had asked him to test her, that he agreed in exchange for lyrium dust. She remembered the dismay and shock on his haggard face when his powers didn’t leave her insensate in the marsh, remembered how close she had been to killing him before Meraad whistled shrilly for her to desist.  _

 

She re-engages her core, checks that her bow shoulder is rotated back and down, that her left elbow is rotated down and out of the path of the string, that she’s still balanced on the balls of her feet, that her lats are pulling her shoulders down.  _ When she was learning to engage her lateral muscles, Tama told her to imagine that hooks pierced the skin of her armpits and were tied to stones on the ground. She remained grateful that Tama had only made her  _ imagine  _ such a thing.  _

 

Her fingers loosely grip the bow, only tight enough to hold the weapon steady.  _  The Ashaads didn’t know the first thing about archery, and she’d considered it part of her training to keep her focus while they made silly comments. ‘I heard that women can shoot a tit off if they aren’t careful.’ ‘Don’t be daft; Adaar’s tits aren’t that big.’ Then Tama flicked their ears and said, ‘If an archer’s tit is in front of the bowstring, she’s using too big a bow or she is  _ really  _ doing it wrong.’ _

 

Breathing through the crunch, she tightens the muscles between her shoulderblades to draw her shoulder, right arm and the string back just a little bit more. She feels the tension of the bow equally distributed between the right side of her body, pulled back, tight but not strained, and the left side of her body, smooth and straight and strong, extending from her spine through her bones, through the bow, reaching to her target. Her spine is the axis, balanced and sure.  _ Once she tried to use her bow as a mage’s staff, and the surge of mana exploded the bow into shards of laminated wood and horn, turned the bandit in front of her into a perforated, bloody mess. The bowstring, suddenly released from 60 pounds of pressure, whipped around too fast to see and cut a quarter-inch slice into her left horn. To this day, she keeps that part of her horn uncovered by silverite, strangely proud of the results of her stupid decision. _

 

She inhales slowly, incrementally releasing the tension in her fingers until the string escapes at the beginning of her exhale. Her fingers reflexively curl back into the anchor position, her hand in the same place on her face. Her back muscles pull her right shoulder back a bit more as she releases the string, the muscles no longer working against the weight of the bow. Her bow arm is steady, pointing towards the target even after the arrow is loosed.  _ Tama taught her both dead release and dynamic release, and she’d stubbornly stuck with dead release (‘fewer variables’, she’d said, but in fact she never got the hang of keeping her bow arm steady through the shot when she tried dynamic release). Ashaad Two had said, ‘We want ‘em dead, not dynamic,’ and Adaar and Tama had just sighed.  _

 

She keeps her bow arm up, even though the bow tips slightly forward in her loose grip, until a couple seconds after the arrow has hit the target. Then she looks where the arrow struck. It would have been a bullseye, but the arrow has pierced a shiny red apple instead, pinning it to the target. 

 

Adaar looks up at Sera’s open window. “Is this your subtle way of suggesting that I eat something?”

 

Sera blows a wet raspberry, polishing another apple on her plaideweave vest. “Not like you need to grow more, but yeah, I guess.”

 

She walks to the target and frees the apple. “Want to share?”

  
“Only if you come up here. Hey, how come you do the boring release instead of the sexy one?”

**Author's Note:**

> The names of the Valo-Kas are from the Wiki.
> 
> Not beta'ed. Please let me know if you see any errors, or if you think I should change/add any tags.
> 
> I started writing out the steps to my shot as an exercise, but then decided I could have more fun if I made it into a story. Besides, there’s that tumblr post going around saying how it’s so cool to learn obscure details about an author’s hobbies through fanfic, so here’s the archery how-to story you never knew you wanted? I mean, it’s this or a sheep-to-shawl competition. Or a college professor AU. 
> 
> I shoot 25# Olympic recurve (usually, now I'm shooting 15# because I'm recovering from a shoulder injury), and I have never shot an apple. I started shooting as physical therapy for my scoliosis, and it's super duper fun.


End file.
